


Power

by SharpestRose



Category: Angel: the Series
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-01
Updated: 2011-07-01
Packaged: 2017-10-20 21:54:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/217468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SharpestRose/pseuds/SharpestRose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Looking back, looking forward.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Power

I didn't get a taste of power, even secondhand, until I was eight years old. My mother's boyfriend, a service station attendant named Charlie, never had much to do with us kids. Dad was the one who made sure we all got to bed at night, but Dad never had any power. He tolerated Charlie coming over nights, for one thing. 

And when I was eight years old, my mother's drinking got so bad that she often passed out before Charlie felt satisfied. So then he'd come to me, calling me things like little one and pretty thing. He'd give me a piece of gum when he was finished, and I'd break it in half to save for the next day's recess, where I'd boast to all my friends at school about all the great things my parents could afford and blow big sugary bubbles in their faces.

But Charlie wasn't my first taste of power, hell no. That happened one Saturday, when Mom sent me down to the gas station where he worked to invite him over. There was a shiny red car pulled up in front of one of the pumps, nothing like the beat up old rustbuckets the locals drove. It was the prettiest thing I'd ever seen in my life, the same color as my oldest sister's glossy red lipstick she wore on Friday nights. My sister was four years older than me, and used to sell kisses behind the gym at school dances. She used the money to buy sodapop, but would never share it. She said she had to rinse the taste of the boys away.

Charlie was talking to another man, and I knew right away this was the guy who owned the car. He had a suit on, and his hair was as neat and sleek as his car. He looked at me the same way Charlie did when Mom was drunk, even though I was wearing a grimy teeshirt and cutoffs and covered in dust and dirt from the walk.

I got twenty dollars from the man with the shiny car. I sat on the back stairs with the note clutched between the fingers of my right hand, memorising the texture of the paper and the color of the ink. It was more money than I had ever seen in my life, and it was mine. I wiped my mouth with the back of my left hand distractedly. I didn't plan on using any of the money to buy sodapop, because I didn't mind the taste. It was power, and unlike my sister with her swollen mouth and real long showers that made everyone mad because she used the hot water up, I liked it.

Angel's got an ego even bigger than he is, with his wisecracking and redemption and, most eviable of all, his beautiful, haughty, blonde ice queen. She may never have loved me, not like she loved him, but she couldn't quite bring herself to actually kill me either. I had power enough to stay alive, at least. Angel has the ego to think he can walk in the dark and not be touched by it, and maybe he can with an attitude like that. Somehow I doubt it.

From that first moment in the office - So who am I supposed to kill? His name's Angel - it was like electricity. I hated it. I hate it when anything has power over me, especially other people. We went out for an expensive dinner and played the power game of sex versus money, and found ourselves perfectly matched opponents. We had as much ego as Angel back then, everything was in control and conscience was for the weak.

If only it really was that simple, if only the grit and grime didn't cling to the space behind my eyelids and everything I'd ever done didn't replay itself inside my head before I slept at night, on those rare occasions I slept at all.

We met up again a few years later, neither of us appear so different to how we did in LA if you don't look too close at our eyes. We match well, even though neither of us will ever be ready to talk about the demons of the past, literal and otherwise. When you look into the abyss, the abyss looks into you, and when you tear your gaze away it's comforting to catch the eye of another human being who's been there too.

Last summer we went back to the area I grew up in, it's just it was twenty years ago. Charlie's still at the gas station, I could recognise his profile from the car as we drove past. I didn't want to go in, because once you've achieved closure it's pretty damn stupid to go opening the door again. My older sister has grown up to become exactly like Mom, which was enough to make me break down and cry when we got back to the hotel. That's the other thing about being married that's nice, somebody's there to hold you when you cry, or wake up with a nightmare.

The next day we started the drive back to the house we'd bought in Chicago, and for a surreal moment I felt like instead of going home, I was leaving home. But then the feeling passed, because I left that home a long time ago. And living in the past isn't half as much fun when there's so much future ahead.

We walked through the valley of the shadow of death and came back out, and even though we're hardly unscathed I still consider that the closest thing to real power anyone in this world can have.

  



End file.
